Sir, – It was with great sadness I read the latest scaremongering closure story prediction about Balmossie fire station in Dundee (May 18).
Just last week I spoke to the man whose life was saved when he was rescued with seconds to spare after a fire in his home some years ago in Monifieth by full-time firefighters, who are on duty 24/7 at Balmossie station.
When I asked the gentleman if the firefighters had been any later in arriving at the house fire he was involved in what would have happened, he said he would probably not be alive.
The retained firefighters of Balmossie do a magnificent job for the community but cannot be in two places at once.
Retained firefighters have to drive from their homes to the fire station and then to the fire.
Minutes lost will mean lives are lost and/or property lost.
The influx of population in and around Balmossie is and will be massive in a couple of years and it would be a calamity for the area if this fire station were to be under threat.
The powers that be will of course trot out the same old stuff about Kingsway fire station or Arbroath covering the area just as quickly. It is rubbish. Statistics show there are more fires during the night and more people are killed at night.
Angus councillor Bob Myles is still smarting from the slapdown given to him by the fire board after he wanted to take the full time fire engine from Balmossie and put it to Forfar.
Balmossie staff do hundreds of home safety visits and dozens of back-ups to other fire stations.
Ed Thomson. Balmossie campaign coordinator, 3 Camphill Place, Broughty Ferry
Gay ministers move a mistake
Sir, – I was exceptionally disappointed with the Church of Scotland’s decision to allow gay ministers who are in civil partnerships to be ordained.
I feel that this is a grave mistake and it will cause more division anddisunity within an already divided church.
The Bible is very clear on this subject that marriage is for a man and a woman and it seems that the Church of Scotland has departed from the word of God and bowed its knee to politicalcorrectness.
However God is not politically correct.
On their own head be it. With 182 against the decision and 309 for, it cannot be seen as an overwhelming majority that supported this move.
I congratulate the 182 for the courage of their convictions and being prepared to stand by the Bible.
We live in an age where almost anything is tolerated and if we do not stand for something we will fall for anything.
Gordon Kennedy. 117 Simpson Square, Perth.
Moral duty lies with the SNP
Sir, – With the Labour Party south of the border now leaderless and Jim Murphy in Scotland set to stand down next month, it is clear that it will be the SNP and its 56-strong group of MPs who have a moral imperative to provide robust and effective opposition to the Tories, not only in Scotland but across the UK.
Labour have failed to develop a strong alternative to the Tory agenda in a range of areas, including austerity, the economy, the welfare state and Europe.
These are the issues that look set to be at the forefront of business in the new Commons.
The SNP, by contrast, have a powerful manifesto mandate to oppose austerity, propose investment in job creation, speak out against cuts in benefits for disabled people and insist the UK cannot leave the European Union unless all four of its constituent parts agree.
Effective SNP opposition will not only be good for Scotland but will also be to the benefit of people throughout the UK.
And that first test will come with scandalous Tory proposals to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights.
Alex Orr. 77/2 Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh.
High time we scrapped IPSA
Sir, – It is noted that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is expected to confirm a 10% rise in members’ salaries and backdated to May 8 to boot.
So much for the “we are all in it together” comments, much played upon while entering into the current period of austerity.
It may be that there is a case for an increase in parliamentary remunerations to attract the very best of politicians but surely not at this present point in time when working families have been feeling the pinch, and wages are only slowly gathering pace.
IPSA has become out of control, completely out of touch with reality and cannot be seen to be as wholly independent.
The time must have come to scrap this body.
David L Thomson. 24 Laurence Park, Kinglassie.
Recycling not our key concern
Sir, -Scottish Environmental Secretary Richard Lochhead told MSPs that a “deposit-and-return” scheme to recycle empty bottles and cans is being looked at by the SNP Government.
Agency Zero Waste Scotland has published a report and is asking for comments.
I would imagine that most will be unprintable.
Every household already has a recycling bin which includes cans and there are bottle banks in supermarkets and other areas accessible to the public.
There are far more important considerations such as the 165,000 unemployed in Scotland, the imminent closure of Longannet, that Tullis Russell is in administration, that Prestwick is a subsidised dying white elephant and numerous economic and social problems.
Mr Lochhead said: “Is deposit and return the next big thing in Scotland?”
How much are we paying him and his entourage for this drivel?
The words Rome, burns and fiddling spring to mind.
Clark Cross. 138 Springfield Road, Linlithgow.
Head of state shows her grace
Sir, – Politics attracts unpleasant people as Alex Salmond’s malicious piece on Jim Murphy (May 18) demonstrates and it reminds of the varied reactions to the Profumo scandal.
The political class feigned horror but the Queen wrote him a letter in her own hand thanking him for all he had done.
Among the things she mentioned was that he had landed in Normandy on D-Day and been decorated for bravery.
Profumo redeemed himself with charity work but the event stays in my mind for the grace of the Queen and I hope we never have a politician as head of state.
Dr John Cameron. 19 Howard Place, St Andrews.
Labour Party has lost its soul
Sir, – It is a measure of how right-wing the Labour Party is that the rout has prompted a chorus of demands for a return to New Labour.
Both Tony Blair and his chief strategist Peter Mandelson have intervened to reinforce the message that Labour lost because it failed to make an appeal to the middle classes.
Worse still, according to Mandelson, was that it gave the impression that it was “for the poor, and it hated the rich”.
The election does indeed prove that Labour’s core constituency has been eaten away. But workers have deserted it because they already view it as a Conservative Party Mark Two, with almost one-third of the electorate seeing no point in voting at all because no party has anything to offer them.
Miliband’s feeble tack to the left was entirely unconvincing, coming from a party that was pledged to austerity and that is incapable of putting behind it the actual record of Blair and his successor Gordon Brown as a tool of big business and architect of the Iraq war.
Labour’s rout is far more than the failure of just one party. It is the failure of an entire political perspective and of all the parties and organisation based on it. Across Europe, the former social democratic organisations are disintegrating.
Having long ago abandoned their reformist pretentions in response to economic globalisation and capitalist breakdown, whether in Britain, France, Greece or elsewhere, they have become the ruthless exponents of austerity and war.
Alan Hinnrichs. 2 Gillespie Terrace, Dundee.
Decision on City Hall was correct
Sir, – It is to be hoped your report (May 18) is correct that the dire, destructive, misguided threat of demolition to Perth City Hall has been lifted.
Its loss by demolition could have finished off the Fair City’s centre and the reprieve could be the key to saving central Perth.
A hare-brained civic plaza scheme has, it seems, thankfully, been abandoned.
Many useful, realistic schemes for the hall’s re-use have been proposed but, hitherto, rejected by determined council wreckers until councillor Alexander Stewart’s recent helpful intervention.
Why that was not settled 10 or more years ago is incomprehensible, and, meanwhile, we have been deprived of the hall’s use as a community centre and the cash yields it would have provided.
The poor business record of the council officials and scrutiny of their plans by councillors shows they are not the people finally to adjudicate on the hall’s future.
Consider the loss of the auction mart, the failed cyclists and pedestrian Tay bridge, the lapsed incinerator planning permission, the Perth Theatre fiasco and the proposed road over the crematorium grounds.
Now Perth City Hall has a chance. Its revival should include expert guidance from outwith Perth, including architects, business and tourism specialists.
Isabel and Charles Wardrop. 111 Viewlands Road West, Perth.